The semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) industry has experienced exponential growth. Technological advances in IC materials and design have produced generations of ICs where each generation has smaller and more complex circuits than the previous generation. In the course of IC evolution, functional density (i.e., the number of interconnected devices per chip area) has generally increased while geometry size (i.e., the smallest component (or line) that can be created using a fabrication process) has decreased. This scaling down process generally provides benefits by increasing production efficiency and lowering associated costs. Such scaling down has also increased the complexity of processing and manufacturing ICs and, for these advances to be realized, similar developments in IC processing and manufacturing are needed.
One advancement implemented as technology nodes shrink, in some IC designs, has been the replacement of the typically polysilicon gate electrode with a metal gate electrode to improve device performance with the decreased feature sizes. One process of forming a metal gate stack is termed a replacement gate or “gate last” process in which the final gate stack is fabricated “last,” which allows for reduced number of subsequent processes, including high temperature processing that must be performed after formation of the gate. Such a process uses a dummy gate stack, which is subsequently removed and replaced with a metal gate stack. There are challenges to implementing such features and processes in the scaled down processes however. For example, filing the trench provided by the removal of a dummy gate stack encounters an aspect ratio that is challenging to fill without inducing voiding.
Thus, while the present gate-last processes of forming a metal gate are suitable in many respects, there may be a desire to improve the methods and/or devices to reduce the gap-filling issues for example.